Juno

I can feel it coming. Like the Iraq troop surge, I can feel my humble blog drawing the ire of the Juno apologists already and I’ve barely typed two sentences. I see them in my sleep. Tons and tons of Myspace junkies stalking me, putting orange tic tacs in my mailbox, and calling me “homeskillet” before pounding my precious face in. I can imagine deleting hundreds of comments that chide me for not “getting it” or for “missing the point.” Yet, I can’t resist telling the truth about Juno and that truth, like a bolt from the blue, is that Juno is the most overrated film of 2007.

Juno stars Ellen Page as Juno McGuff, a 16-year-old girl who becomes pregnant after one sexual encounter with her close friend Paulie Bleeker, played by Michael Cera. Juno calls her best friend, Leah (Olivia Thirlby) and, after a contrived conversation which is one of many in Juno, decides to schedule an abortion. With immense glibness and smugness, Juno heads for the abortion clinic and eventually becomes overwhelmed by the situation, deciding instead to give birth to the baby but to give it up for adoption. She finds a suitable couple, Mark (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) Loring, and sets up the adoption agreement with more smug dialogue and contrivances. The film takes its course as we follow the characters through to the inexorable conclusion of the situation, hitting each note along the way.

Juno was directed by Jason Reitman, the director behind the disappointing Thank You for Smoking and the son of director Ivan Reitman. Reitman’s direction here is nearly invisible, but it works out well enough. It’s the script that bears the water weight of this beast, though. Penned by blogger Diablo Cody, the screenplay feels ripped off from Myspace pages and Facebook walls and then put on steroids. Cody writes unnaturally, almost as though she’s in overdrive trying to establish trendy dialogue, and the characters punch it out with a forceful persuasiveness that leaves no stone unturned. As a result, I found very little by way of character charm or natural development. Everyone sounded a little too much like Darlene from Roseanne with punked-out pop culture references that were simply too audacious.

Before I continue, I have to say that I tried to like this film. I really did. I sat there and forced laughs out of the overly stylish conversation between Juno and Leah which featured some of the most idiotic and downright mean dialogue I’ve heard recently. While I know there are numerous girls in the circuit that refer to each other as “dude,” Juno made this annoying and forced. And while lines in the film could have been funny, they just aren’t. “Can’t we just like kick this old school? You know, like I stick the baby in a basket, send it your way, like Moses and the reeds?” says Juno to the potential adopters upon knowing them for all of five minutes. Yeah. Here’s an example of the dialogue, again:

Leah (answering phone): “Yo Yo Yiggady Yo.”

Juno: “I’m pregnant.”

Leah: “Honest to blog?”

Juno: “This is not a food baby all right? I’ve taken like three pregnancy tests, and I’m forshizz up the spout.”

Leah: “How did you even generate enough pee for three pregnancy tests?”

Juno: “I’m telling you I’m pregnant and you’re acting shockingly cavalier.”

Leah: “Is this for real?”

Juno: “Yes.”

Leah: “Phuket, Thailand!”

That’s how bad it is, I’m not kidding. If the characters in the film could stop winking for a moment and start acting relatively human for what is supposed to be a relatively human comedy-drama, I might be able to overlook exchanges like the aforementioned. Alas, I can’t and the film fails miserably as a result. Currently, the buzz is out about Juno and people are flocking to the theatres in droves to experience it. That’s good, I like the idea that people go to see smaller films and experience new things. I have nothing against the ideas in this film, nor do I hate the whole film, but I did hate most of it.

Juno is currently gathering up a considerable amount of steam due to an overwhelmingly high critical rating. It sits at 93% over at Rotten Tomatoes and is considered by many critics, including the esteemed Roger Ebert, to be the Best Film of 2007. It’s not. It’s not even close. While it does have some charm to it and carries a continuous plot that, while formulaic and utterly predictable, is warm enough, there’s just too much smugness here to create much enjoyment out of the project for me. None of the characters mattered to me, the performances seemed preoccupied with trying to wrap the dialogue up properly instead of feeling the characters, and the whole thing felt like an exercise in attempting to develop new slang and style rather than a legitimate and honest narrative with heart. Juno, in my opinion, is not good at all.

Trailer: